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This isn’t the first time I have talked about how much fun can come my way being a blogger and this is definitely one of those times. I found out the other day about this awesome event happening this weekend right here in Toronto – Oktoberfest at the Steam Whistle Brewery! Here is the poster taken directly from the Steam Whistle site where they have an event page, but don’t worry I am going to get into more detail below.

I met with Greg Taylor, the co-founder of Steam Whistle and was given a tour by his wife Sybil and they are both amazingly nice people. They also love to party and have a warm relationship with their staff treating them almost like a huge family…in fact, the guy on the right with the hat on in the promotional graphic for Steam Whistle Oktoberfest below is Greg Taylor! There is a man who clearly likes his beer! No models or random dudes for Steam Whistle, the founder of the company is in their pics! (Although maybe next year you guys can include a German bar maid or 3 on the poster? No offense Greg.) The other guy in the picture is Josh Hillinger, the Steam Whistle retail manager.

The Steam Whistle Brewery is located at 255 Bremner Blvd in Toronto (Google Maps link) which is right near the Rogers Centre (aka SkyDome) and a couple minutes walk from Union Station. (The walk is all indoors, even though it is supposed to 18 degrees Celsius and sunny on Saturday according to the Weather Network http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weather/CAON0696). Steam Whistle will also, I am told, going to have SHUTTLE SERVICE from Union Station right to the brewery in the Steam Whistle Party Bus.

The event starts at 3pm and finishes at 11pm so you will have ample time to catch the subway – or even go out to your next location as the city’s Saturday night really warms up. Read more…

I was driving downtown to pick up my NXNE 5 Day Music Pass which I won courtesy of an awesome friend of mine’s blog – Joshua Murray aka @phjoshua – and en route down I passed the corner of Yonge & St Clair where I saw some fine folks who looked like they were handing out some Stella Artois Legere. I quickly pulled over to the side of the road after I turned off of Yonge onto St Clair – obviously I don’t use my phone while I drive! That’s dangerous! – and checked the Stella Artois Twitter account @StellaArtoisCAN. Sure enough they mentioned to their followers that they were setting up shop to hand out Stella Artois Legere in “#Summerhill” as they put it.

Summerhill Toronto map via Wikipedia

They won’t give exact locations for these things because they do not want to cause havoc by handing out free beer and announcing the exact location on the interwebs – they wouldn’t even tell me where they mean when they say #Willowdale which is really the closer location to where I live that they have been tweeting about.

Willowdale Toronto map via Wikipedia

I like that they are so worried about such things and want to stay on the exact right side of the law. They even made sure to check everyone’s ID – even if they clearly were old enough to have voted Diefenbaker in as Canadian Prime Minister in 1957. I am completely serious about this.

Stella Artois Legere via beerguy.ca

Beyond that, they did two other things:

To discourage people drinking in the streets, they bottles they gave out were not cold – and who really wants to drink warm beer?

They gave everyone who received a Stella Artois Legere from them a stamp on their hand (see below for mine) so that you couldn’t pretend you didn’t already get one. This is probably to prevent random drunk people running around neighborhoods of Toronto courtesy of Stella Artois = bad PR.

My Stella Artois stamp

I have yet to actually drink the beer (it is cooling in the fridge) but I have had it before. For a light beer – which I usually do not enjoy – it is VERY good. Have you tried Stella Artois or Stella Artois Legere? What did you think? Have you seen the Stella Artois Legere teams around Toronto? Where?

My understanding is that they will be doing this giveaways all weekend all summer. If this were Facebook I would be clicking the “Like” button on them giving out free beer.

It was some of the most fun I have ever had at a Jays game in all honesty. I mean, I have been to numerous games in the past but never with such a large group of people when I wasn’t on a camp or school field trip. The sun was shining, the dome was open, there was good friends around, baseball to watch, and beer to drink. Read more…

Have you ever lied about your age?

I think everyone I know has lied about their age at some point. When I was in high school I made myself a fake American license in the name of “Daniel Bradley”. If I recall correctly my birthday was November 23, 1978. I downloaded the template on the interiorwebs and printed it out once I had filled in the necessary info. I then went to Grand & Toy at Yorkdale Mall (this was when it was still there) and had them laminate it for me…the guy gave me the strangest look when I asked him to laminate that card, I’ll never forget.

Why did I lie about my age? Why does any 16 year old kid lie about his age? I wanted to go to bars and R rated movies, buy alcohol, cigarettes, and porn – remember, the Interwebs were mad slow back then and even had they been high speed there wasn’t near the abundance of pornography available online yet. I am sure you all can think of a million and one other reasons why you might have lied about your age to be older when you were a teenager who wasn’t old enough to do certain things yet.

Was I believed? Hell yes I was! Looking back I am really surprised I was believed but then again most people wouldn’t have believed that such things were relatively readily available to be downloaded online back then. I just printed it up on my printer and while it did look pretty close to the real thing (the colors were slightly off) nowadays there is no way such a thing would work. The other thing I think which worked in my favor was the fact that it was a license. People saw license and thought there was no way I could get my hands on it without it being legit. Ah, those were simpler times!

I wonder if I still have that license lying around somewhere…I gotta have a look-see.

Now here is the common sense instructional aspect for any of you teenagers reading this. If you’re going to get a fake ID (or borrow someone else’s) LEARN THE INFO ON THE ID!

This summer on the way up to my friend’s cottage on a long weekend – I am pretty sure it was Canada Day weekend – I stopped at a “Foodland” in Mt. Albert, Ontario to buy some beer because they were running out at the cottage. I was actually very lucky to find the place as all other LCBOs and Beer Stores near my friends’ cottage were closed but because this was a supermarket which had an LCBO/Beer Store in it they were still open. Anyway, while I was waiting for my turn at the cash register I saw this kid get totally turned down for buying beer. He used an ID that was from, if I recall correctly, Massachusetts and knew NONE of the info about the address on the ID. That is such an amateur mistake. Granted, I no longer remember my own ID’s address I mentioned above but hey, it was from over a decade ago! Notice how I still remember the name and birthday? That’s because I had that memorized so I could rattle it off if ever questioned. Because when you look young and you’re using fake ID (or borrowed ID) you have to be able to be believable about it. Who doesn’t know their own address? Oh, and in case you’re wondering, they didn’t card me when I got to the front of the line at the Mt Albert Foodland Beer Store…I was insulted they thought I looked so old.

Now that I have contributed to the delinquency of minors everywhere and told all y’all where you should go if you live in Toronto and want booze on the long weekend on the way up to Cottage Country I think I can get outta here and go drink some beer.